


Mourning Sun

by Elke Tanzer (elke_tanzer)



Category: Romeo+Juliet
Genre: Angst, Character of Color, Epilogue, Introspection, M/M, Yuletide, Yuletide 2004
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-24
Updated: 2004-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:58:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elke_tanzer/pseuds/Elke%20Tanzer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Globe pool hall, as glooming peace dawns that fog-bound morning in Verona Beach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mourning Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this story gave me a wonderful if slightly hurried excuse to upgrade my VHS copy of the movie to DVD, and to reread the play, though it meant a few really late nights this holiday. Thanks to Widget, Boniblithe, Vissy, and Wenchita for beta-reading under the time-crunch of the impending pinch-hit deadline!

The cue's smooth wood slides through numb fingers, rod gliding through tangled thoughts, balls spinning and bouncing and clacking, none sinking.

Stripes and solids bank against limits of their world, their predictable shapes giving false confidence, yet they careen off one another, loud clacks in the silent, humid room, thoughts buzzing like flywings against glass panes cracked and smoky.

The 8-ball rolls to a stop, still and apart yet at the center.

Benvolio rubs at his tired eyes. They still sting.

He thinks of the last game he played with Romeo, cue ball bouncing off the table, the banter of love and hopelessness and the bindings of the heart making strange collusion to end the game, premature. Ended too soon.

He thinks of the last game he played with Mercutio, pun and innuendo and raucous hilarity, a celebration of vigor no matter the impending crush of depressed defeat. Ended too soon... but for far different reasons. They could not have continued their verbal groping in public, and Mercutio had always had a more clever tongue... in every way.

But he dares not think on that now.

Now the pool hall is empty, and even the check-desk is abandoned this day. This day, the city mourns, and marks dour celebration of a final bloody end to bloodiest of battles, young blood spilled in love ending bloods spilled in hate.

This day, Benvolio plays alone.

By Romeo's example he should be beating his breast and writing sorrowful poetry, tearing at his clothing and swearing vengeful recompense... or losing himself in some new infatuous impossible romance.

He was never a poet, and sometimes he thinks he may not have much self to lose. But no... he is worth... was worth the attentions of such a one as Mercutio.

By Mercutio's example...

No. He cannot think on that.

Mercutio was...

No.

He takes aim, and the cue rolls unsteadily but sinks two despite his relative inattention. He doesn't mark whether they are stripes or solids.

If Romeo taught that love is fickle, pale and changing as the moon, affections silver-bright and sudden, attentions intense and singular, and seldom returned...

Attentions.

Attention. Pay attention.

He scouts the table for another likely shot. This time, it's solids, and he takes careful aim. He sinks another, or was it stripes he was working toward the pockets before? He carefully sinks one just to be sure. To balance the table.

Balance...

Then Mercutio taught that lust is hot, bright and fiery and as encompassing as the sun, warm to the touch for all who would bask in it, and yet scalding to the unwary by turns.

And he had basked in it. Ducked self-consciously from the shadows, added randy play with men to his tally of nights wooing the ladies with his unclever wit. Admittedly... without the one certain man he would not have tested his mettle.

Mercutio was dark as night, dark as chocolate, dark as heady red wine.

Yes, he must think on it.

All he'd known of women had been simpering sex; "perchance 'tis nobler find willing sheaths among men, 'til wedded bliss join moon and sun from both quarters," Mercutio'd said, rich sly voice laughing yet solid serious. And Benvolio had followed his lead.

Differences were not so different after all, and sameness had its own nectared sweetness. Scarce-concealed glances, glittering glances, 'neath the glaring neon and jangling bell-toll of Apples' Orchard arcade... rough and tumbled and sequined and sparkled and naked and wrestling in the sand of the Sycamore Grove... it was all the sun, and it warmed him when he hadn't before felt any chill of cold.

All he'd known of men had been bladed and brutal; "find honor in joy of life's revelry," Mercutio'd said, so Benvolio'd kept close his resolve, despite hot heads and chill glares of friend, relative and enemy alike... keep the peace and drink together, dance the practice of blades for sheer joy in the skill, drive the wild wind with the freedom of young men of strength... find joy in life's revelry...

'Tis nobler to keep the peace, to celebrate life and self, to shun depressive infatuated moon, inconstant, for the certain uncommitted heat of lustful sun... no matter the orbed clamor of planets misaligned in brutal disarray all about one's world.

Yes.

He has been rolling the cue-ball across his palm as thoughts consume him. He notices that the smooth surface has a few chips. Quite unlike pale unmarred young cheek, silver tongue riddling unrequited love... and quite unlike the fair dark complexion grinning in his dreams, gasps unrestrained, skin sliding across skin, sweat catching and running painted gold and silver against dark curls and tawny red.

Mercutio was not a constant soul, but he burned bright.

Benvolio replaces the cue and takes aim, sinking solids and stripes in inconsequential turns.

He hadn't spent as much time as he would have liked standing unashamed in that light, really. He misses the glitter, like sparkles on water, like gilded fountains and fireworks and neon and spotlights. They'd near-blinded him at the time, but he would not now trade them for the world.

He speaks to the empty room. "Fickle men tempt fickle fate with declarations of unrequited love. Joyful lust is much more constant, and nothing untoward or shamed should thus be stated truth."

They'd all deserved better. But life seems always so arranged, like the smooth colors on faded felt, their positions not of their own making. He is tempted to take up one bright-colored ball at a time and hurl them against the walls with all of his strength.

But he doesn't. He's always the expected one, the obedient one, the one who does not startle or start, though he'd often enough been in the thick of it, at least until now.

He speaks again. "If moon be price paid for shunning sun, and sun be price paid by moon for tides and planets set 'gainst each other, then all debts be paid, and darkness finds its peace."

Noble peace, darkness.

The final ball sinks with a clack into its pocket. Only pale cue, now quiet and still, keeps court with solitary 8.

"But would sun have so desired to be lost, no light at all to shine through inky black? No, every night has its own following day, and always end even most mournful laments."

He takes aim, and sinks the cue.

He curls his hand around the 8-ball, and carries it with him past the unattended desk, into the doorway. He pauses, notes that the morning sea-fog has begun to burn off, and slips his sunglasses into place.

He nestles the 8-ball with care into the empty space in his glovebox before he warms up the engine. It settles silently, rolling slightly so the 8 tips to infinity.


End file.
